Pumpkin
Medium: Etching on Verin d’Arches paper
[1 plate, 1 color, 1 run]
Year: 1994
Image: 29.5 x 45.2 cm (11.6 x 17.7 inches)
Sheet: 45.5 x 63 cm (17.9 x 24.7 inches)
Edition: 75
Artist’s Proofs: 11 AP
Printer’s Proofs: 2 PP
Hors Commerce: 1 HC
Printer: Kimura Kihachi, Tokyo
Publisher: Kimura Kihachi, Tokyo
Literature: ABE 201
Yayoi Kusama Prints 1979-2017, ABE PUBLISHING LTD, Number 201, Illustrated page 121
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil on lower edge
Pumpkin presents a striking black pumpkin set against a calm pale background. The pumpkin, with its smooth, rounded form, is adorned with Kusama’s signature polka dots, creating a simple yet compelling contrast. The dots, varying slightly in size, add depth to the pumpkin’s silhouette, accentuating its bulbous shape. The pumpkin’s stem, gently tilted to the left, adds a subtle dynamic to the otherwise minimalist composition. This work captures Kusama’s ability to evoke depth and movement within a pared-back, geometric framework, transforming the pumpkin into a quiet but powerful symbol of her artistic vision.
“Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood. They speak to me of the joy of living. They are humble and amusing at the same time, and I have and always will celebrate them in my art.”
Kusama’s affinity with the misshapen gourd is rooted deeply in the artist’s biography and is closely tied to the patterns of infinite repetition and accumulation that best define her practice. Growing up on her family’s seed farm in Matsumoto, Kusama was surrounded by the natural world, an environment that directly informed the severe auditory and visual hallucinations that the artist first began to suffer as a child. However, where her recollections of other animated plants and accumulating talking flowers take on more terrifying dimensions that the artist would compulsively return to in her phallic soft sculpture installations, Infinity Nets, and mirrored environments, the pumpkin provided an altogether more comforting vision.
“It seems pumpkins do not inspire much respect, but I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form. What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness.”
Since then, the artist has gone to lengths to describe the joy and comfort that the humble and humorously shaped squash has provided over the years, and her work continues to celebrate them and the unassuming joie de vivre that they embody. Among the earliest subjects treated by the burgeoning artist, Kusama’s first depictions of pumpkins date from the 1940s, following her training at the Kyoto City Senior High School of Art in the traditional Nihonga style of painting. Kusama would later describe the meditative effect of this practice, repeatedly returning to the kabocha and capturing their unique charm in a manner that anticipates the compulsive repetitiousness of her later Infinity Nets and mirrored environments. Tellingly, the pumpkins made their presence felt in these performances too, forming an integral part of the presentation Mirror Room (Pumpkin) in the Japanese pavilion of the 1993 iteration of La Biennale di Venezia, where the artist, costumed in polka dots, dispensed smaller handheld pumpkins to visitors. The room – like the pumpkins and the artist herself – was covered in black polka dots, recalling her Happenings in 1960s New York and their emphasis on modes of “self-obliteration”.
Source: Phillips
Auction Results
Phillips Hong-Kong: 12 December 2024
Estimated: HKD 190,000 – 290,000
HKD 241,300 / USD 31,035
YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin (K. 201), 1994
Etching on Arches paper
Signed, titled in Japanese, dated and numbered 10/75 in pencil
There were also 11 artist’s proofs
SBI Art Auction: 15 July 2023
Estimated: JPY 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
JPY 8,625,000 / USD 62,145
YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin (Kusama 201), 1994
Etching
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
From the edition of 75
SBI Art Auction: 30 October 2021
Estimated: JPY 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
JPY 5,520,000 / USD 48,435
YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin (Kusama 201), 1994
Etching
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
From the edition of 75